by Caro Peacock
She put down her fork and touched the inside of my wrist.
‘My dear, I admire you for putting a brave face on things. So it’s up and on with the hunt.’
‘Celia, it isn’t a hunt. You don’t bring a husband home over your shoulder like a haunch of venison.’
Her laugh brought people looking towards us again.
‘Oh, how convenient if one could.’
‘Celia, you married for love. My mother and father married for love. If I can’t do the same, then I shan’t marry at all.’
‘Nonsense. You’re far too pretty and agreeable to be an old maid. But one really can’t be too fussy.’
I finished my salmon, remembering that with Celia the impulses to hug her and hit her with a heavy object were never far apart. What I couldn’t explain to her, because there was nothing in her life that would help her understand, was the delight that I was beginning to take in my independence. I’d fallen into it by accident, and the shock had been like a plunge into cold water, but now I’d learned to swim in it and the water didn’t seem so cold after all. It would take a more remarkable man than any I was likely to meet on the social circuit to understand that.
Luckily, something had happened to change the subject. Two women had arrived late and, instead of being annoyed because they’d missed her performance, our hostess was fawning over them like royalty. The older one was tall and middle-aged, the younger one in her early twenties. Celia caught her breath.
‘Look, it’s Rosa Fitzwilliam.’
She was staring at the younger woman like an astronomer seeing a comet. Rosa Fitzwilliam was a little above average height, slimly built but with a good bust and beautiful sloping shoulders. Her face was a perfect oval, complexion like alabaster with moonlight on it. Her chestnut brown hair, swept up into elaborate spirals, was pinned with a diamond aigrette that caught the light from the chandeliers as she graciously nodded at her hostess’s words. Celia wasn’t the only one looking at her. A hush had fallen on the room. Some people were staring at her openly, others trying to carry on their conversations while looking at her sidelong.
‘Who is she?’ I said.
‘Oh, my dear, where have you been? She’s positively the Beauty of the season. Just come over from Dublin, or everyone would have known about her long before. Just look at those eyebrows. Do you suppose she plucks them?’
They were two flawless arches; her lips, equally flawless, could have come from a classical statue. I looked and puzzled about this question of beauty. In my opinion, Celia was at least equally beautiful, and there were several other women in the room of whom you could say the same. And yet they were staring at Rosa Fitzwilliam without envy, as if she came from another planet and they could not be expected to compete. For some reason, every now and then, society chooses to pick out a lovely woman and raise her to the status of the Beauty. There was no arguing with it.
Rosa Fitzwilliam graciously accepted a glass of champagne and moved across the room to talk to a group of people she obviously knew. Conversation swelled again, but there was an excitement in the room that hadn’t been there before she arrived, the way the air quivers after lightning strikes.
‘I suppose they’ll have to put off the marriage if his father dies,’ Celia said.
‘Whose father?’
‘The whole thing is terribly hard for her, although you’d never guess it to look at her. After all, she couldn’t possibly have known when she accepted him at Christmas time. Nobody had the least idea then.’
‘Least idea about what?’
‘If it came to it, I suppose he’d have to release her from the engagement. It would be the only honourable thing to do, don’t you think?’
‘Celia, I haven’t the slightest notion what you’re talking about.’
She stared at me.
‘Surely you’ve heard about the Brinkburns? Everybody’s known for weeks.’
I bit my tongue. Even if everybody had known for weeks, my promise to Disraeli of secrecy still held.
‘Known what?’
She handed her empty plate to a passing servant and brought her head closer to mine.
‘Rosa’s engaged to Stephen Brinkburn. His father’s madder than poor old King George was, and he’s going to die any day now. Only there’s some doubt about Stephen’s right to inherit…apparently his father wasn’t…well, you know.’
If I hadn’t heard the story already from a more coherent source, no, I shouldn’t have known. But one thing was clear. However hard Disraeli and his friends were trying to keep the scandal within a small circle, it was already the talk of the London drawing rooms.
‘But she’s still engaged to him whatever happens, isn’t she?’ I said. ‘She can’t just send him back like a pair of gloves that aren’t the right colour.’
‘My dear, what pictures you’re painting. It seems quite clear to me. If it turns out that he isn’t and the younger brother is, then strictly speaking it’s the younger brother she should be engaged to, and since he’s supposed to be in love with her too, like all the other young men, it wouldn’t make a lot of difference. Except to poor Stephen, of course, but then…’
She stopped talking because another of those sudden silences had just fallen on the assembly. Celia turned towards the door.
‘Oh look, it’s him.’
A young man was standing just inside the doorway, his posture stiff and his face serious. He was in correct gentleman’s evening wear of black and white. The last time I’d seen him he’d just rolled down a flight of steps in full armour and was trying to do serious harm to his brother. From the silence, and the set expression on his face, many of the people in the room had heard about it already and he was all too aware of that.
Everybody seemed to have noticed his entrance except Rosa Fitzwilliam. She had her back to the door and was talking to one of her group. Stephen started walking towards her, like a man who expected to come under fire. One of her companions must have said something, because she turned and smiled at him. To me, there seemed a hint of strain in her smile, but it must have been good enough for him because he smiled back and relaxed a little, as if the other people didn’t matter so much after all. He walked up to her, took her hand and raised it to his lips. Celia caught my eye and gave an upward jerk of her chin.
‘Still on, then,’ she murmured to me.
It was safe to say it now, because people were talking again and pretending to disregard the couple. From Rosa’s gestures, it looked as if she was rebuking Stephen playfully for being late, tapping his coat sleeve with her fan. The gesture was charming, vivacious, just a little too stagey, as if she knew very well that everybody’s attention was on them. A footman had appeared at our side and was waiting for Celia to notice him.
‘Your carriage is outside, ma’am.’
Celia stood up.
‘Darling Philip is so concerned I shouldn’t stay out late. Do let me drop you off.’
We said our goodbyes. Her own footman helped us into their comfortable carriage, upholstered in pink. When Celia asked where I lived I suggested that she should put me down at the corner of Mount Street. I had no shame about living among the artisans and animals, but I knew it would puzzle her terribly. On the short journey she chattered on about the endless good qualities of her Philip, so there was no opportunity to get back to the problems of the Brinkburn family. As I was getting down, she kissed me.
‘Oh, it’s been so pleasant. Let’s meet again soon. You must come and see me. Do say yes.’
‘Yes, but I don’t even know where you live,’ I said.
She produced a tiny pink notebook from the pocket of her evening cloak and a silver pencil as thin as a flower stem.
‘You’ll come tomorrow, or the day after, promise? The doctor says I must rest in the afternoons and you’ve no idea how achingly dull it is, Elizabeth.’
Clearly my name was a lost cause with her. She tore the page with her address out of the book and pressed it into my hand. I watched as her
coach pulled away, pleased things had turned out well for her. Also, I was glad to have set eyes on the possibly transferable fiancée. Altogether, it had turned out to be a more instructive evening than I’d expected.
CHAPTER THREE
You can buy anything in Bond Street. Anything, that is, except what a person might need in everyday life. Ironmongers, cobblers or grocers have no place on these elegant pavements. But if you want, say, a painting reliably attributed to Fra Lippo Lippi, a marble Aphrodite from Delos, a sacred scarab once owned by an Egyptian pharaoh, you may stroll up and down Bond Street and take your choice from several of each. You could also equip yourself with a full suit of armour, a crested helmet, sword, battle-axe and caparisons for your war horse.
I’d walked past Samuel Pratt’s shop at number 47, on the corner of Maddox Street, almost every day, stopping now and then for a glance when he had some particularly elaborate suit of armour or flamboyant banner in his window.
His customers, I’d assumed, were people who wanted these things to add historical tone to the halls of their newly built gothic castles. The knowledge that he was now supplying them to men who intended to wear and use them gave the place a new interest for everybody. When I walked down Bond Street on a sunny morning to keep my appointment with the younger Mr Brinkburn, there were so many people looking in Pratt’s window that they blocked the pavement, and two carriages were waiting outside. I pushed my way through and went into the shop. The high walls of its salesroom were hung with banners, shields, battle-axes and dozens of swords and daggers arranged in symmetrical patterns. Suits of armour on dummies flanked a door to an inner room. Two gentlemen and a black-coated salesman wearing white gloves were standing at a table gravely examining gauntlets. There was no sign of Miles Brinkburn.
‘Fifteenth-century German,’ the salesman was saying, ‘hardest steel that was ever made, but they’re supple as silk.’
A younger salesman came towards me and asked if he could help. I told him that I had an appointment with Mr Brinkburn.
‘He’s through there in our workshop, ma’am, seeing his armour unpacked. He said you were to be shown through.’
He opened the door between the two guardian suits of armour and stood back to let me pass.
Miles Brinkburn was down on his haunches beside a crate surrounded with wood-shavings, studying what looked like a piece of leg armour. He stood up when he saw me.
‘I’m so glad you could be here, Miss Lane. It arrived just before they closed last night and they haven’t had time to unpack it all yet.’
A well-dressed man in his mid thirties whom I took to be Mr Pratt himself was standing beside the crate, supervising an apprentice who was removing more wood-shavings. It struck me that Pratt looked worried. Miles, on the other hand, was glowing with enthusiasm. He showed me the piece of armour.
‘Just look at the great dent in this greave. Pratt thinks it’s old damage. It might have happened when my ancestor Sir Gilbert was wearing it in a tournament four hundred years ago.’
It struck me that it could have just as well resulted from some domestic accident twenty years ago, but I didn’t say so.
‘The armour’s been standing in our gallery all my life,’ Miles said. ‘I used to dream about it as a boy. I never imagined I’d be wearing it in action one day.’
Pratt looked even more worried. Miles pushed the apprentice aside and delved in the case like a child in a bran tub, bringing out another greave and two or three more pieces I couldn’t identify. Pratt took them and inspected them gravely, nodding his head.
‘Yes, they have every appearance of being authentic fifteenth century.’
‘Of course they’re authentic. They’ve never been out of the family. Now, where’s the main part of it, the what d’you call it?’
‘The cuirass,’ Pratt said. ‘It’s over there by the wall.’
He nodded towards the back and breastplate that would cover the upper part of the body.
‘It will have to be altered to fit me,’ Miles said. ‘Our noble ancestor must have been on the small side. I’ll need it done well before the tournament so that I can practise in it.’
Mr Pratt coughed.
‘When it comes to alterations, I think I should say that your brother may have…’
It sounded like the start of a speech he’d been preparing. Miles broke into it impatiently.
‘It’s nothing to do with my brother. I was the one who had the idea of sending for Sir Gilbert’s armour. He’ll just have to make other arrangements. Where are the spurs? They’ll need new straps.’
Mr Pratt looked anything but reassured, but must have realised he could take the subject no further at present, so signed to one of the apprentices to drag out another crate from where it was standing next to the cuirass. The lid was still nailed down and they had to use a crowbar to lever it off.
While the work was going on, I had a chance to look round. A craftsman was hammering delicately on something at a bench by the window. Wooden dummies stood along the walls, wearing various bits of armour. A full-size wax model of a leg dangled from a peg. Other pegs held leather tunics that were presumably for wearing under the armour. It might have been ancient sweat and blood from those that, in the heat, gave the workshop a pronounced animal smell. I noticed Mr Pratt looking round and wrinkling his nose. Wood splintered. The apprentice wrenched off the lid of the case, disclosing a layer of wood-shavings. Miles Brinkburn stepped forward eagerly, then fell back. The smell was suddenly much worse.
‘What the…? Have they gone and put a dead rat in with it?’
Mr Pratt took his place and scooped out double handfuls of wood-shavings, dumping them on the floor. Something rat-coloured, but not as solid as a rat, appeared among the shavings in the crate. Wispy, like human hair.
I was only a few steps away at the time and my heart gave a thump. I don’t know why, but I think I guessed before anybody else in the room what was happening, even before Pratt turned pale and drew his cupped hands back as if he’d been bitten.
‘No,’ he said, as if the thing could be made to go away.
As the shavings in the crate settled, a yellowish dome appeared as if it were rising by its own will. Pratt staggered back. The apprentice screamed.
‘What is it?’ said Miles. ‘What’s happening?’
His view of the crate was screened by Pratt. He sounded impatient. When nobody answered he pushed past Pratt then came to a sudden halt.
‘Oh God.’
In spite of the heat of the day, I was shivering. I told myself: You’ve seen worse than this. It was true, but that didn’t make it any better. I wanted to look away, but there was a terrible fascination about that head. The shavings had settled now, just at the arch of the eyebrows. The skin of the forehead was shiny and tight-stretched, with a small liver-coloured birthmark shaped like a map of Ireland on what would have been the hairline when the person was younger. A man, certainly. A man going bald but not grey yet. A middle-aged man who did not go to expensive barbers. I wished my mind would stop working like that, coolly forming conclusions while the rest of me shivered. It registered too that there had been a peculiar tone about Miles’s ‘Oh God’. It sounded like recognition as well as shock.
To his credit, Pratt must have been cool enough to notice that too.
‘Do you know him, sir?’
Miles retched out a ‘yes’. Then added, ‘I think so.’
‘We’d better get him out.’
When it was clear that he’d get no practical help from Miles, Pratt reached into the packing case. The head flopped forward. The hair at the back of it was black and clotted.
I thought: Head wounds bleed a lot. There’s no blood on the shavings, so he was dead before they nailed him up in the crate. It seemed a relief to know he hadn’t been shut up in there alive and suffocated. I don’t think I said anything out loud, but I must have made some movement that reminded Pratt I was there.
‘Get the lady out of here,’ he said to the
apprentice.
In fact, the apprentice needed help far more than I did. He looked near to fainting and I had to guide him towards the door to the shop. Just before we got there, he leaned over and vomited. I jumped aside in time or it would have been all over my shoes. When I glanced back, the body was out of the case and Pratt had laid it on the floor, surrounded by pieces of Sir Gilbert’s armour. It was a man in black trousers and jacket and what looked like a coarse, yellowish shirt. He seemed rather shorter than average and younger than I’d guessed, perhaps in his mid thirties. Above the retchings and gaspings of the lad, I heard Pratt repeat his question:
‘Do you know him, sir?’
And Miles Brinkburn’s answer, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying:
‘It’s Handy. My father’s servant, Handy.’
I’d have liked to hear more, but had the apprentice to look after. Several well-dressed gentlemen took backward steps as I propelled him through the door into the shop. I sat him down in a chair meant for customers and told the gauntlet salesman to bring him a glass of water. The man looked so horrified at this breach of protocol that I thought it was just as well he didn’t know what was happening in the workshop. He was still dithering when the door from the workshop opened and Pratt told him to go and find a policeman.
‘A policeman, sir? Has something been stolen?’
‘Just go and do it,’ Pratt said.
The man gulped and left the shop at a run. Pratt went back into the workshop. Before he closed the door after him, I heard a snatch of Miles’s voice, saying shouldn’t they wait before calling the police? Wait for what? I wondered. The customers were asking each other and me what was happening. I had no idea, I said. One of the gentlemen said his armour was out in the workshop and he hoped to goodness it wasn’t one of the things stolen. He showed signs of wanting to go through for a look, but luckily the shop assistant was back within minutes with a police constable in tow. There are always plenty of police in Bond Street. The assistant opened the door and let him through to the workroom. The customer worrying about his armour tried to follow, but Pratt barred the way.
